NOTE: THIS USER GUIDE ONLY APPLIES TO THE V3 NODE
For the CTT Node V2 please consult the appropriate user guide in the CTT User Guide Directory
Congratulations on your purchase of the new CTT Node V3! The CTT Internet of Wildlife System, which the Node has been an integral part of since the beginning, has just gotten a whole lot more awesome with this new Node. We took your suggestions to heart in developing this new Node, which has a few very specific benefits and departures from the old model:
We have no doubt that you are excited to deploy your Nodes, so here’s a quick start guide to get you going in a few minutes.
Your Node comes with the hardware necessary to mount it to a piece of 3/4” conduit. Note other mounting hardware is absolutely possible so feel free to use whatever makes sense for your site.
Included with your shipment are:
You will also need:
Consult the photos below for a visual description of how the hardware is connected. In short, use the four screws to attach the mounting shields to the back of the Node V3. The top shield also has three holes in a triangle pattern which can be used for mounting the solar-rechargeable power supply. You can also decide to mount the power supply elsewhere if that’s more convenient or better for recharging.
There are two rectangular cutouts on each of the mounting shields which can accommodate a hose clamp for wrapping and tightening around your mast material. Zip ties or other tools may be used as well.
The power cable runs first through the cap of the
cable gland, then the rubber grommet with the
lip of the grommet facing toward the Node (see
red arrow in the image below)
When you screw the cable gland cap onto the
cable gland, it will compress the grommet and
seal around the cable. Before tightening, make sure the power plug is
pulled through the cable gland and into the case, and plugged into the
5v barrel jack on the Node board. Ensure a little bit of
slack on the cable inside the case and then tighten down the cable gland
cap until there is no movement in the cable when tugged lightly. This
process both seals the entry from water, and helps reduce the chance of
unintentionally pulling on the power cable and damaging the board.
We recommend the final tightening of the cap with a crescent wrench.
Once the cap is tightened, you should see the grommet compressed around the cable.
Yellow LED: Power Output
ON: Output VoltageOFF: No Output VoltageGreen LED: Charge Indicator
Blinking (1x per second): Charging (battery voltage
between 2.8-4.0V)Fast Blinking (2x per second): Not ChargingSlow Blink (1x every 2 seconds): Charging, but battery
voltage below 2.8VSolid ON: Battery more than 90% chargedRed LED
ON: Normal battery voltage (above 2V)OFF: Battery is below normal voltage or otherwise in an
abnormal stateWe recommend that all Nodes are placed within 1km of a SensorStation to ensure that all data is effectively transferred from the Nodes to the SensorStation. This assumes good line-of-sight between the Nodes and the SensorStation, so every installation must consider topography, vegetation, or height of Nodes and/or SensorStation antennas when estimating detection distance. Some trial and error should be expected when setting up your Node grid.
Nodes can be used for various reasons to answer a number of questions. This section assumes that Nodes are being used for localization, or estimating a location within a Node grid from multiple simultaneous Node detections. In this case it’s important to understand the relationship between distance and signal strength between your tags and your grid of nodes. This can be accomplished using one of your tags and a CTT Sidekick. This is covered in the Sidekick User Guide, but assuming you have a good handle on at what distance signal strength becomes uninformative, with regards to distance, you will want to ensure that your node spacing is less than this distance. In several empirical cases we have found that distance to be ~150m, so spacing nodes every 100m or less is good for a number of bird species. For species that spend their life on the ground (turtles, etc.) this distance may be closer to 50m, but ultimately will require some test data collection.
Your Node V3 will collect and periodically send 434MHz and 2.4GHz tag detection and health data packets to a nearby SensorStation.
CTT Mobile App (see configuration
section)Your CTT Node V3 is not shipped with an SD card, but you can add one for backup storage as well as for manual data collection and management.
Hot swapping the card is not supported. It is encouraged to power down the device before inserting/removing the card.
Prior to inserting a new SD card into a node, please ensure
it has been formatted as FAT32
We strongly recommend not exceeding 16GB SD cards
When properly set up, your Nodes will collect and send their data to a nearby SensorStation, not requiring you to access the SD card internal to each Node. That said, if you need to access the SD card, that process is much easier on the new Node. The Node comes with an SD card slot that can be used for logging detections and other system related processes. The following features are available through the SD card.
Windows 10
If the SD card is present in the Node, each detection will be logged. The type of detection will determine where it will be saved as well as what information will be accessible to the user. Files are capped at 25 MB to ensure most text editors can view these files without becoming sluggish (On most computers).
Detections are stored as .csv format. In this protocol, the first row contains a list of comma-separated keys called headers. These headers are the names for each column. Each subsequent row contains the corresponding comma-separated data.
Detections from the 434MHz receiver will be saved in on the SD card with the following format:
434_mhz_beep_n.csv (Wherenis an integer that gets incremented every time the previous file exceeds 25 MB)
The following CTT products apply to the 434MHz category:
| Headers | Units | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| time | ISO 8601 | 2022-04-14T21:25:22Z | Time of detection [UTC] |
| tag_id | Alphanumeric | 3319332D | Factory programmed identifier. Traditionally an 8-character id, however some ids contain an additional layer of verification which makes them 10 characters. |
| rssi | dBm | -79 | RSSI is an indication of the power level being received by the receiving radio after the antenna and possible cable loss. Therefore, the greater the RSSI value, the stronger the signal. Thus, when an RSSI value is represented in a negative form (e.g. −100), the closer the value is to 0, the stronger the received signal has been. |
Approximately 27 million records of type 434MHz can be saved per 1 Gigabyte of SD card storage.
gps_n.csv (Wherenis an integer that gets incremented every time the previous file exceeds 25 MB)
| Headers | Units | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| time | ISO 8601 | 2022-04-14T21:25:22Z | Time of location [UTC] |
| latitude | Decimal Degrees | 38.296078 | The north–south position of a location on the surface of the Earth |
| longitude | Decimal Degrees | -104.356331 | The east-west position of a location on the surface of the Earth |
| altitude | Meters (Above Mean Sea Level) | 1428 | |
| hdop | 0.68 | Dilution of precision | |
| vdop | 1.36 | Dilution of precision | |
| pdop | 1.31 | Dilution of precision | |
| on_time | Seconds | 90 | Time the receiver was in the on state. |
health_n.csv (Wherenis an integer that gets incremented every time the previous file exceeds 25 MB)
| Headers | Units | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| time | ISO 8601 | 2022-04-14T21:25:22Z | Time of health snapshot [UTC] |
| batt_mv | milli-volts | ||
| charge_mv | milli-volts | Average charger voltage since last health message. (Voltage sampled every 60 seconds) | |
| charge_ma | milli-amps | Average charger current since last health message. (Voltage sampled every 60 seconds) | |
| temp_battery | celsius | ||
| temp_charger | celsius | ||
| temp_node | celsius | ||
| energy_used | milli-amp-hours | ||
| sd_free | % | ||
| sub_ghz_det | |||
| ble_det | |||
| errors |
log.nnnn (Wherenis an integer that gets incremented every time the previous file exceeds 25 MB)
The device writes system logs to the SD card for troubleshooting and diagnostics reasons.
The current Node Firmware as of this writing is
v0.6.0-beta.
If you are used to the Node V2, then you may have used Node Client to communicate with your Nodes. This is no longer needed with the Node V3 as the new Nodes can pair directly with the CTT Mobile App and changes to the Node are made directly through pairing with the app.
You can find links to both the iOS and Android versions of the CTT
Mobile App on our main user guide page here,
or by searching for CTT Mobile in the respective App
stores.
To pair with your node, open the CTT Mobile App on your mobile phone
and click the Connect Device button. This
will open up the Available Device page. From here, click the
Start Scan button. This will then display
any and all Nodes within your phone’s detection range.
If you have more than one Node, a good way to determine which one is closest to you is to use the RSSI value.
Choose the Node you wish to pair with by clicking the
Connect button. You will get a
Pairing Complete! message when you have successfully
paired with the Node. From here, click the
Go button.
You now should be on the Details screen. At the bottom
of the page is a menu with up to five buttons, the active page’s button
is in blue.
Details - provides an overview of
Node Status, Solar Charging Status (only valid
when attached to the Solar-rechargeable Power Supply), and
Current Config
Map - Displays a map showing your location relative
to all Nodes currently being detected, which have valid GPS fixes. Nodes
without GPS fixes will not be displayed on the map.
Listen - This page is where you can toggle on and
off viewing tag detections on both 2.4GHz and 434MHz frequencies, via
the app. Note that the Node is always listening (or is listening on
a pre-determined schedule, if you have modified the configuration), so
toggling on and off these buttons only toggles whether or not the App is
displaying detections on your phone.
Config - This page allows you to modify the Node
config file and upload it to the Node you are paired to in real-time.
Config parameters include:
Enable/Disable LEDs : Default =
ON
Adjust the Health Packet interval (min): Default =
15 min
Uplink Tx Power (Low/Med/High): Default =
Low Note this is the power used for the Node to
send data to the SensorStation and therefore only affects transmission
from the Node to the SensorStation
434MHz Scan Hours (0-24): Default is
ALL. Note that all times are in UTC.
2.4GHz Scan Hours (0-25): Default is
ALL. Note that all times are in UTC.
!!ALERT!! If you shut off all 2.4GHz hours and then unpair with the Node, you will not be able to pair with it again, since you have told the Node to turn off the 2.4GHz radio indefinitely. Also, if you do set a schedule for 2.4GHz listening, you can only pair with your device during those hours when it is listening. For instance, if you are studying Monarch butterflies using the BlūMorpho tags, and only have the Nodes listening during the daylight hours, you will only be able to pair to your Nodes with the CTT Mobile App during those daylight hours.
Once you have set up the config as you like, click the
Submit button to push it to the Node. Leaving the page by
clicking one of the other page buttons, and then returning to the Config
page, will allow you to confirm the config has been updated. If you are
working on a config and change something you don’t want to change,
simply click Reset. If
Dev (this may not be available) - The
Developer page has three buttons at the top:
Command - allows the user to submit various commands
to the Node, and provides feedback from the node via the output
window.
FW Update - allows the user to upload a new Firmware
file.
Clear - clears the output console
This User Guide is a living document. Your experiences and input are
greatly appreciated so please don’t hesitate to reach out to us
regarding what you’d like to see included here. You can submit your
suggestions and any errors to our Customer Service Desk here
and we will work to incorporate them in future revisions. All material ©
Cellular Tracking Technologies, 2024.